Bette’s eyelids grew heavy, and she allowed them to close. Nights of sleeplessness had begun to catch up with her.
“Here, open your mouth,” Lilith said.
Lilith unscrewed the cap on the Sound Sleep bottle. “Two drops, and you’ll be out like a light. Valerian root.”
Bette opened her mouth, cringing as the cool liquid hit her tongue. It wasn’t unpleasant. The woody taste lingered in her mouth after she swallowed.
“I’ll see you in the morning, honey,” Lilith told her, kissing her cheek as Bette stood on tired legs and walked upstairs to bed.
The following morning, Bette found Lilith in the kitchen, brewing tea and baking banana-nut muffins.
Lilith had always been a baker. When their mother was dying, Lil set up shop in their kitchen and baked for days. The girls lived on oatmeal cookies and zucchini bread.
Their mother, who struggled to eat as the cancer stole the last of her appetite, still managed a few bites each day of Lilith’s carrot-cake muffins.
The memories had forever ruined carrot cake for Bette, but Crystal still loved it and bought a carrot cake on their mother’s birthday every year.
Homer sat at the counter, drinking coffee and sifting through the previous day’s notes.
“Smells good,” Bette said, yawning and stretching her arms overhead.
“You slept in,” Homer said happily.
Bette looked at the clock over the stovetop and squinted at the little black numbers.
It was after nine o’clock.
“Valerian root,” Lilith said, grinning. “Sit, have a muffin. They’re coming out hot right now.”
Bette sat at the counter, feeling energized for the first time in days.
Lilith pulled a pan from the oven and lifted a hot muffin onto a plate. She dropped a tablespoon of butter on top and slid it over to Bette, doing the same for Homer.
“I brewed coffee too. Coffee or green tea?” Lilith asked.
“Coffee all the way, Lil. Green tea tastes like seaweed,” Bette said.
Lilith grinned and shook her head.
“Seaweed that’s chock-full of antioxidants, young lady. I’ll make a convert of you one of these days.”
Bette drank her coffee and leaned close to her dad.
“Yesterday was a blur. What have you got?”
He showed her his latest list, organized in neat bullet points.
“I’ve sorted the most important points from the day. In particular, I think we need to focus on canvassing Weston’s neighborhood with fliers. We know she visited him two days before she disappeared, but who’s to say she didn’t go back the day of? Our best chance is to get eyes on this flier. I’m also curious about their trip to the UP. I’d like to know what the tour guide thought of them. If he saw any arguments.”
Lilith looked at the page. “How about his wife? Has anyone talked to her?”
“Officer Hart said they were going to, but I don’t have any news on that,” Bette said. “I’d like to talk to her myself. I want to talk to everyone who knows Wes - his parents, his ex-girlfriends, his buddies. Anyone that might know what he did with Crystal—”
“Start with the tour guide at Michigan Mayhem,” Homer said. “I’m heading to Kinko’s in twenty minutes to print more fliers.”
Bette remembered how Crystal had glowed when she returned from her weekend in the UP with Wes.
“I am so fucking in love,” Crystal had shouted, telling Bette about the trip as they walked through an open-air farmer’s market. Several of the vendors had laughed, and one older man had shouted, “With me, I hope."
Bette had cautioned her against falling too fast, but they both knew she’d surpassed that months earlier.
“Did something happen on their trip?” Lilith asked.
Bette shook her head.
“Not that she told me, but I think you’re right, Dad. I’m going to go talk to the guide, but first I want to talk to Weston Fucking Meeks.”
15
Then
“Wes, I’d like you to meet my sister Bette.” Crystal wrapped an arm around Bette’s waist and kissed her cheek through the sheet of dark hair that fell over her shoulder.
Bette held out her hand.
“So, you’re the poet?” Bette shook Wes’s hand.
He smiled. “I teach poetry, yes.”
“He lives poetry,” Crystal corrected, leaving Bette to wrap both arms around Wes’s neck and kiss him.
The kiss was long and deep. The kind of passion that seeped from Crystal’s pores, and that Bette had always found alien and uncomfortable.
“Don’t forget to give his tonsils a wash while you’re in there,” Bette told her.
Crystal laughed and pulled away.
“They’re squeaky clean,” she promised.
Wes chuckled.
“Well come on, let’s get out of this rain,” Bette urged, throwing the door wide and spilling light from the hallway onto the porch.
She led them into the kitchen.
After Bette had taken over the house, she’d painted the walls in every room white. She liked color, a splash here and there in the form of paintings, but preferred blank walls. Anything more seemed to overwhelm her.
“I don’t cook,” Bette said over her shoulder. “But I picked up enchiladas from Vinnie’s.”
“Vinnie’s? Sounds Italian,” Wes said, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the rack.
“He’s a rebel like you,” Crystal laughed. “His parents own a chain of Italian restaurants, so naturally he opened a Mexican restaurant down the street.”
Bette eyed Wes. “You’re the rebel in your family? You and Crystal make a fine pair, then. Though my father favored her despite her wayward choices. Her rebellion backfired.”
“Mine was not rebellion. I just like what I like,” Crystal insisted, slipping off her shoes and leaving them on the rubber shoe mat.
“I’m not sure rebellion is what I did,” Wes offered. “Rebellion implies someone cared either way. I never had a mother prodding me to become a doctor, so the thought never even crossed my mind. But Crystal tells me you’re an anthropologist? That sounds interesting.”
Bette smirked. “It’s not. To most people anyway. I can happily disappear into the black hole of studying genealogical records for days, but that would put Crystal to sleep in ten minutes.”
Crystal yawned. “I’m like Pavlov’s dog,” she said. “As soon as Bette says ‘genealogical records,’ I doze off.”
Bette grabbed a strand of Crystal’s long red hair and pulled.
“It’s that humming bird brain,” Bette teased. “She can’t concentrate on anything for over five minutes, Wes. You’ve been warned."
Wes didn’t respond but took Crystal’s hand and turned it over, lifting it to his mouth and kissing her palm.
Bette felt a tug in her own heart, an unspoken wish for that same kind of intimacy, but she stuffed it down, heading for the stove.
While Bette finished warming the food, Crystal tugged Weston upstairs.
“Welcome to the shrine,” Crystal said, pushing open a door.
Wes stepped into the room.
“The shrine?” he asked, looking around.
“It all belonged to our mother. Over the years, we gradually moved it in here, Bette and I mostly, but sometimes my dad too. I’d come in here and sit in her chair, smell her clothes, touch the things she loved.”
Wes walked to a high bookshelf cluttered with books, figurines and pictures.
He picked up a glass pig wearing sunglasses.
“I told you,” Crystal laughed. “Her mother collected pigs.”